Thank you. A very warm welcome from SGL's side as well.

Time is running. First half of '26 is behind us, and today we want to discuss and present to you our first half figures and give you a short overview about our expectations for the second half of 2026.

Even today, Andreas Klein, our CEO, and Thomas Dippold, our CFO, will lead the presentation and will be able to answer your questions. Now I hand over to Thomas.

Please, it's your turn.

Thank you, Claudia. Hello from my side.

This is Thomas Dippold, and it's my privilege and honor to guide you through our results for the first six months of the year. On slide number 4, you can see the overall development of the group.

Our total turnover dropped by 13% or roughly €60 million, coming from €453 million to now €394 million in the first six months of 2026. Where does this come from?

To a large extent from the discontinuation of our loss-making Carbon Fibers business, which we still had in our books in the first six months last year. Last year in June, we closed our site in Lavradio, they were producing, same with Moses Lake, for the first five respectively six months of the year before the closure took place.

Therefore, a like-for-like sales decline is derived from that, which is €50 million. The other €10 million, which our total turnover deteriorated from our operational level, can be attributed to the high-margin business in Graphite Solutions, where we still see a very sluggish development, and the demand for this high-margin silicon carbide business didn't catch up until now.

Second, also our Process Technology business unit suffers from a very weak order intake and order book, which, well, maybe turns a little bit better in the second half of the year, but we come to that when we discuss the business units. What we have on a contrary is the following: we have compensation payments received.

We also mentioned that in the first quarter call, you'll probably remember that we already collected the first €7.7 million in the first quarter of 2026, where we renegotiate the take-or-pay contract, the customer downpayment contracts with our customer. Another one has been renegotiated, which stands for €21 million, and this is also top-line, but also profit and cash for the first six months of this year, and this is what's already also in our top line.

Our EBITDApre deteriorated only by 3.7%, coming from €72.5 million in the first six months last year to now roughly €70 million in 2026 H1. Where does it come from?

On the one hand side, of course, we got rid of the loss-making business in Carbon Fibers. We see on the other hand the downpayments or the contract renegotiations and the compensation payments in there.

In the end, it also reflects the weak business in the high-margin Graphite Solutions business and the Process Technology business. Our EBITDApre margin reaches 17.7%, which shows a very healthy, well, margin, at least if you include the compensation payment.

Coming to Graphite Solutions, the biggest business unit and they stand for more than 50% of our overall sales, there we see an increase in the sales coming from €221 million to €234 million. This is an increase by 6%, but it also includes, as I just said, the compensation payments for the adjustment of the supply contracts with the take-or-pay customers, mainly in the silicon carbide business.

If we exclude this, then we would see a slight decline in our turnover by -6%, which represents the weak economy that we're currently dealing in and a rather stable or maybe slightly negative business in all other market segments. Our EBITDApre is up 14.2%, coming from €40.8 million in the first six months last year to now in H1 2026 €46.6 million, again affected by the compensation payments.

Our EBITDApre margin in Graphite Solutions reaches some very healthy, almost 20%, again slightly negative impacted by currency effects. Process Technology, again, a weak quarter, same as Q1.

We see a huge drop in our overall turnover by almost 30%, 28.2% to be precise. We reached €70.2 million in the first six months last year, and we now drop to a little bit more than €50 million in our top line.

We still see a very weak market situation. Also, the, yeah, conflict in the Middle East doesn't help because it also makes sure that every investment decision in the chemical business is currently postponed or at least put on hold.

We see large uncertainties, and they're really hitting us with the order placement from our chemical industry customers. We see a lot of maintenance postponements because the assets are not fully utilized, and none of the effects is really helping us, at least top-line-wise, in the business of Process Technology.

As a matter of fact, also EBITDApre is heavily impacted on that. The huge demand which we saw over the development over the last three years, where we could increase the margin quite a bit and there was really a very strong demand and our capacities were almost fully loaded and fully utilized, this has turned to the negative.

Our EBITDApre reaches €7.3 million in the first six months of 2026, whereas we had almost €20 million in the same period of time last year. The market situation, as everybody on our level of the value chain is underutilized, there's price pressure from the few orders that are out there in the market, and the margin decreased then, as a matter of fact, to 14.5%, coming from 28.3% in same period last year.

Last but not least, on slide number 7, we show you the development of our Fiber Composite business. As a reminder, Fiber Composite, since beginning of the year, is a combination of the former business units Carbon Fibers and Composite Solutions.

We merged the two businesses as we restructured Carbon Fibers to a profitable core. There you see also a sales decline by a little bit more than one-third, coming from €150 million last year to now roughly €100 million in H1 2026.

This is exactly the aforementioned decline coming from the restructuring. This is €50 million, which stands for the continued business that we had in the first six months last year until the closure of Lavradio and then subsequently in Q3, the idling of the capacities in Moses Lake, United States.

This was expected. If you turn it around, then you see that all our other business or the continued business with carbon fiber is at least flat, and we can keep our sales.

When you look at the bottom line, at our EBITDApre, there you see a huge improvement in profitability, coming from €10.6 million in the first six months last year to now almost €19 million, and I think that clearly shows how successful we were with the restructuring of our Carbon Fibers business. We also kept our promises.

You probably remember that if you follow our calls, we once mentioned that our restructuring cost shall not exceed €50 million over a course of two years. We have accomplished that target.

Our overall restructuring costs were a little bit more than €40 million, and we did it in less than one year, the overall restructuring. I think we clearly showed that it was a very rigid and consequent restructuring, and we made it, to speak, in time and in budget.

In the profitability of our Fiber Composite business, you see that there's also a contribution from BSCCB, our at-equity consolidated JV with Brembo. It also increased their contribution there, but we don't show any sales, we just show our part of the net result in that.

If you take out this margin from the EBITDApre margin, then we reach a very healthy 11.5% margin in our Fiber Composite business, which I think is quite remarkable that after one year of restructuring and the combination of these two business units, we can achieve that. Last but not least, a few more KPIs on the bottom line of the P&L, cash flow, and also balance sheet, yeah, ratios.

Our net result improved drastically. It went back into black figures.

Last year, it was affected by the restructuring, where after six months of the year, we have reached a -€31 million negative net result. It turned positive again and improved drastically by more than €40 million.

We now reach €11.8 million, it's a very stable back in black development. Without the impairments that we have seen last year, our net result would also have been positive in the same period of time.

SGL continues to show black results also at the very bottom of the P&L. Same with the free cash flow.

The free cash flow, yes, includes the compensation payments, but even without them, we show on a quarterly basis positive free cash flow results, and this is a very strong achievement to have €31.4 million as free cash flow after six months in this year, a huge contribution, a huge improvement compared to last year. Last but not least, thanks to the strong free cash flow, also our net financial debt could be lowered by almost €20 million.

It now reaches a leverage ratio of 0.6, this is super stable and super healthy. Same with the equity ratio, it increased to almost 40%.

The ROCE remains stable at roughly 10%. I think that was a very strong start into 2026 after six months.

We're still happy with the way at least the balance sheet and also the bottom line of the P&L develops. Having said that, I hand over to Andreas for his remarks.

Thanks, and a warm welcome also from my side. First and foremost, I'm happy that on the basis of the first half Thomas explained, we are well on track to deliver on our guidance 2026.

At the same time, SGL Carbon Grows 2030 is generating a lot of positive momentum, and that's only less than half a year after its roll out, and we want to give you a couple of insights on where we stand and the momentum we have generated so far. In the area of semiconductor, next to the already explained talks with our customers on adapting the existing contracts and building the future collaboration, we currently see a positive momentum in the market, especially in China and SiC, and that's mainly volume, but also a price stabilization we are seeing there currently.

We have to wait a little bit, we have to be a little bit patient how sustainable this is, but the momentum clearly is there, and that's a positive sign. On top of that, successful market launch of our novel coating products continued, and yeah, it's clearly possible to say that there is outstanding customer feedback on the performance of these products, and this we will hopefully be able to leverage fully in the calendar year 2027.

In the field of nuclear, we have announced on Monday that we have reached a new agreement with X-energy to expand our nuclear graphite production capacities, and that's mainly affecting our production site in Chedde in France, and this investment really positions us as a key supplier and also gives us capacities to develop even beyond our SGL Carbon Grows 2030 horizon into the future. In space, we are successfully progressing in establishing and also expanding customer relationships, and that's mainly affecting heat-resistant materials for rocket nozzle production, very positive development penetrating the market here.

In the area of defense, we are very active at various trade shows in the first half, really expanding our network in the industry, both in the, yeah, drone, but also beyond applications, and in the field of drone projects, we have developed first prototype parts, and we are currently in initial sampling and bidding processes, and these processes are running well, and we expect to see first relevant contributions in 2028, if not earlier. Last but not least, in aero, we managed to double our production volume as a supplier of materials for retrofit floor panels, and due to the structure of that industry, this is really supposed to be a lever into further aero applications for SGL and for our lightweight products.

In summary, it is great to see the SGL Carbon Grows 2030 progress so far, and we consider it being well on track towards our €1 billion sales target in 2030. At the same time, we can confirm our guidance 2026, and that's irrespective of still challenging macroeconomics, of ongoing geopolitical uncertainties, and several key markets remaining weak.

Thank you very much for your attention.

thank you very much. Good afternoon.

A couple of smaller questions, if I may. Following the €29 million already received in H1, should we expect further compensation payments from the semiconductor customer for the remainder of '26?

If so, what amount should we build into our models in this case?

Hello, Lars. This is Thomas.

We are currently in negotiation, as I just said. We have reached agreement with two of the contracts.

We are, of course, in discussions with others. Some tend to just expand the contract, then of course it doesn't have an effect with a compensation payment.

There might be something coming up in the next quarters, but let's put it this way, the big chunk of it has been renegotiated already.

That's already helpful. Thank you very much.

Then looking at the divisions and your guidance, Process Technology sales declined 28% in the first half, divisional EBITDApre more than halved. Unless I'm mistaken, you are still guiding for only a slight decline in both metrics for the full year.

My question would be, does this guidance remain valid?

We see a little bit of stabilization in the order situation right now, but on the low level. We always said that the lead time for the, at least projects, maybe not in maintenance, there still might be the need for, yeah, maintenance and some parts and service business also in the second half of the year, if that catches up, this could improve the situation on short-term basis, but when we talk about the projects, all projects that we get awarded right now will be, yeah, turned into sales, maybe beginning of 2027.

We see the development of Process Tech in the remaining six months of the year on the level where we are right now, maybe a little bit better, but not, yeah, magic turnaround stories.

That's helpful. Thank you.

Then maybe a similar question on Fiber Composites. Here we saw EBITDApre rising almost 80% in H1, yet you are guiding for only a slight improvement for the full year.

To me, that looks rather conservative after six months.

This is true, but you also have to see that a lot of the EBITDA improvement can be, yeah, attributed to the loss-making business in the first six months of last year, which we just stopped and turned around. You can't duplicate that in the second half of the year after the business has been closed, then of course it doesn't make any losses anymore, and this positive effect you can have only once.

Of course, then subsequently for Moses Lake, it also goes until August last year, but the big loss-making unit was of course Lavradio, and this is what we closed mid or towards the end of Q2 last year, and this is the kind of compensation in there. You also have to bear in mind that our BSCCB contribution is also €3 million higher than it was last year, we have to a little bit compare it like-for-like, then maybe what we guided there can be better reconciled.

Understood, and much appreciated. Then maybe a quick last one, more or less rather housekeeping, on the Corporate division, most difficult division to forecast.

You expect a significant year-on-year decline after a €3.4 million loss last year. Modeling '26, can we simply extrapolate the €3 million H1 loss and arrive at a full-year '26 estimate of roughly -€6 million to -€7 million, or would that be too easy?

It's not too easy. It can be seen in this way.

You have to see in Corporate, I understand a little bit why it's difficult for you to, yeah, predict that or to model that because we have a little bit of sales in there, and the sales are more or less results plus cash, because we collect a lot of rental income in there. What you see as sales are some services which we do for BSCCB in our site in Meitingen, but the big chunk of it are rental income.

We have increased a little bit of rent because we rented out some unused buildings in our Meitingen site to external parties, which moved in there and now produce on our site, which is of course helping there. You can expect that we keep our corporate costs and our overhead costs on a very strict review, and you won't see major increases there.

Perfect. That's really helpful.

I'll go back into the line.

Thank you.

Thank you. No further questions, then I think all our reporting papers answer all the questions.

Thanks for your participation. You will find the presentation and our reporting on our webpage, and maybe if additional questions will arise, please call the Investor Relations team.

Thank you, and have a nice afternoon. Bye-bye.